Sunday, May 27, 2018

John Brennan's death threats

There are a couple of ways I fantasize about this playing itself out:

- Trump as Cicero, Brennan as Catiline

- Trump as Mark Antony, Brennan as Cicero

A historical repetition of either a couple millenia later would fill my heart with joy, though the latter is probably a better fit. The thought of Brennan's traitorous hands being nailed to the wall of the Capitol Building while Melania sticks needles in his forked tongue makes me smile.

In seriousness, this is astounding stuff. On the same day Brennan shared Cicero he publicly threatened Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. The bizarre quote didn't draw as much attention as the veiled threats but the two are relatedly ominous.

Either way, we have one of the most connected and powerful people in US intelligence--the new praetorian guard, of which he was prefect until last year--quoting a man who used the Deep State to snuff out opponents and who was in turn snuffed out by the Deep State.

Remember this?

We're long past Peak Russia Collusion. We're nearing Russia Collusion Collapse. Mixing metaphors, Russia is a tiger Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans can't get off of. It's gone on so long now it's hard to see how to orchestrate a winding down with a few more of the irrelevant charges along the lines of the one they slapped Manafort with before closing the thing down. If they can't take Trump out, their collective credibility will be taken out instead.

The political class is fiddling while Rome burns. I'll take pleasure in the screams of each patrician who catches fire. Is it hopelessly naive to think Trump is capable of--or even wants to--purge the praetorians in particular and the residents of the Imperial Capital more generally? Probably. Here's to a scorching hot summer all the same!

38 comments:

216
said...

Let us not forget the traitorous behavior of British MI6, which gave the fig leaf of legitimacy to Steele. Theresa May has been just as dismissive of the US Right as David Cameron was. The Five Eyes agreement is a dangerous subversion of representative government.

One of the unexpected gains of the Trump era has been the emergence of friendly parties in Europe for the first time since the 80s. Many of the US professional class suffer from Euro-envy and this might pay some long-term dividends. The NRA in particular needs to become an international organization.

The CIA and the NSA need to be shut down, worthwhile functions should be distributed to the Defense Department and a successor organization that would be compelled by law to declassify within 4 years.

This is a very interesting tweet: https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1000775124541497344

A lot of it will come down to the testicular fortitude of Republican congressmen if they want to pursue anything further or not. In a midterm year at a time where people are universally for draining the swamp, it may be an easy decision to make. We'll see.

I have to admit the scandals Trump has faced are much milder than I expected they would be.

I read David Cay Johnston's The Making of Donald Trump in December 2016 and figured the deep state would have a field day with all of the funny accounting Trump's businesses have committed. So far, though, his past history as a businessman hasn't been much at all of an issue.

I was concerned we would hear stories about Trump's children making it big on their father's presidency. Maybe they are, but again, I haven't heard any such stories about that beyond a few grumblings by left-wing commentators.

If anything, the Russia collusion conspiracy theory is crowding out potential scandals. I remember one NYT commentator recently complained the Russia scandal was drawing away oxygen that could be going to Scott Pruitt.

Every presidency will have its scandals. The reason why people declared Obama's was "scandal free" was that FOX News was the only major outlet that covered them. But so far, Trump's have been weaker than I thought they would be, given the amount of scrutiny he was guaranteed to be facing.

The problem with using the Russian collusion scandal was that it was overhyped: Trump had directly plotted with Putin! He plotted hacking the DNC servers and released the emails when it was convenient! Trump may have even got Russian hackers to play with the tallies in different states on Election Night! And as soon as Trump is president, he'll capitulate on everything to the Russians!

Instead, it looks like the Trump campaign talked with some shady Russian characters, seeking dirt on Hillary. The more nefarious aspect is that these people may very well have been Hillary, DNC, and FBI plants.

I'm sure most the guys reading this comment believe that Trump has been unnecessarily antagonistic to the Russians, rather than too lenient to them.

If Trump had committed the more serious charges, we would have heard about it by now. But we haven't. And given how assiduously the MSM reports on every little Russian scandal detail nonstop, everyday, most Americans are going to have a hard time believing that the anti-Trump coverage comes from a genuine concern for the well-being of American democracy, rather than just be a partisan hitjob. If things continue as they will, then Trump will have an easier time rather than a harder one of recriminating his opponents as unfair hatchetmen as other scandals emerge.

Brennan is a 1st gen American. His parents were Irish, which is why he looks and acts like a parody of an Irishman. Many of the battles being fought right now seem to be the domain of Celts (the military & deep state) and Jews (finance, academia, and media). Both groups punch weigh above their weight in elite representation/leadership of important institutions, and pre-1880 Americans would be aghast at how our affairs have been overrun by people who have little to no genetic roots in colonial America. We need more Anglo-Teutons to resume their (rightful) role of cultural and political gate keepers. And admittedly , Italians and their descendants have been quite a bit more circumspect after they strove to shed the cultural baggage associated with Ellis Islanders.

Agnostic, being liberal leaning as I am, has made the point that Jewish verbosity and clever-silliness in Dem aligned industries is preferable to Celtic stubborness and brashness in the GOP aligned military, and if guys like Brennan and Comey continue to act like such spoiled tantrum throwing assholes, it's hard to disagree.

As the HBD realists would point out, we already had our hands full in 1880-1970 in terms of altering the character of our nation (which started out as English, then English-Scots-West African, then English-Scots-West African with a dash of Dutch, German, French, and Irish, then after 1880 all hell broke loose and Greeks, Italians, Jews, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Catholics, Jews, and Scandinavians came). The surging population of non-whites since 1970 ain't helping.

The Russia hysteria is funny because it's almost entirely based on projection. Everything the US Deep State and media does, every smear job, interloping, interference, skullduggery, tomfoolery, deception that the US empire has been engaging in since 1946 is characterized as what our enemies supposedly do.

Now granted, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, America could credibly claim to be morally superior which justified the tactics and propaganda we used to attack and discredit our enemies. We certainly made mistakes from 1946-1990, but overall we could've done much worse.

The problem these days is that the America (and to some degree it's biggest allies) is a swaggering dickhead whose financial, political, and military corruption exposes the black heart of our empire. Our elites and their subordinates in the past would sometimes use ethically dubious tactics (and engage in hypocrisy) to support the legitimate well-being of what was thought by many to be the best civilization in the world. Nowadays we have a rotten elite, and their pathetic quislings, that are desperately trying to maintain their political and cultural grasp even as they are outright contemptuous of the values held dear by prole natives.

In other words, at a time when most Americans (certainly the younger ones) are ashamed of what the US has been doing for the last 25 years (which is sometimes ret-conned to include every political and military mistake of the last 70 years), our elites are more officious, arrogant, and shameless than ever. That's an empire in decay. As is also evidenced by the London-New York axis welcoming in millions of foreigners due to natives becoming so depressed and angry at their leadership's bumbling idiocy.

Many of the US professional class suffer from Euro-envy and this might pay some long-term dividends. The NRA in particular needs to become an international organization.

Outside of Britain, Europeans are fundamentally just not the same enthusiasts of neo-liberal tactics and "classical" liberalism that the Anglo-sphere is.

The Anglo-sphere has totally committed itself to financialization.

Underlying the much envied high culture of Europe are tribes which existed in these lands for Millennia. And just 'cuz the Holocaust managed to put Euro tribalism/ethnic nationalism in a bottle for 70 years, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Already Denmark and Austria are going to great lengths to stop future no-go zones from appearing in their countries. And as expected Eastern and Central Europe who've had resistance to not just other Europeans, but more importantly Mongols and Muslims, baked into their DNA, are not cucking at all on the question of neo-liberal favored immigration policies.

America, Canada, Britain, and to a lesser degree, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, have an elite class who've benefited strongly enough from the atomized capitalist mania of the last 70 years to render them vulnerable to the kumbaya memes that propagated after the end of WW2. It's paid for them to "celebrate" diversity and market "reforms". Within 20 years, in every Western country unrestrained market capitalism (which only came about after the mid-1970's) and/or racial liberalism will be......Dead.

The US always used the UK as its proxy vote in the EU, now presumably that role will fall to Poland. Russia doesn't have an EU proxy at the moment, letting Serbia join might provide the needed balance.

I don't know how much resistance can be expected out of Eastern Europe. Cultural liberalism coincides with income, and EU policy has been for the East to converge with the West. The same rotten Hollywood culture is consumed, and English is a required second language in every EU country and some Asian countries. NATO ensures that no country is truly sovereign when it comes to the final argument of the Kings.

The continuing strength of liberalism resides in the university education, media platforms, and corporate elites. The second appears the weakest, but ad dollars moved away from dinosaur media to even more liberal GoogleFaceberg. I don't think elites can be taxed into patriotism and piety. That leaves a slash-and-burn of the university system, which I doubt will be popular, most here envy Continental Europe's tuition free status.

I have to admit the scandals Trump has faced are much milder than I expected they would be.--Sid

Yes. After DJT got the nomination I was expecting the Democrats to bring out an endless parade of people saying that Trump fleeced them in business, didn't live up to contracts, deadbeated them on debts, et cetera. There actually was one very early on, an architect who went on TV to say Trump f*%&ed me over on some hotel renovation. I expected him to be the first of many, but that was it.

It's amazing really. He must be a very very straight on guy in all his dealings.

I can't imagine any Baltic country will ever act as a Russia proxy, even when the local party supported by the Russian minority is in government. The Orthodox countries in the EU are in a fiscal straightjacket, Germany holds their Council votes hostage.

M5S/Lega have said they will vote to end Russia sanctions, which is the main reason why the establishment is pulling out the stops to prevent them from forming government. It only takes one country to vote down the sanctions, but the majority would easily punish a small country, Italy is too big to fail.

For at least a generation longer, Serbia will hate NATO, and that means if they were an EU member they could be relied upon to block any sanctions. The Serbians don't see the Russians as foreigners that foisted communism upon them, as Tito maintained his independence from the rest of the Eastern bloc. The Chinese are also expanding their investments in the Balkans. Russian/Chinese capital is a good counterweight against Blue Banana capital.

Indeed. Marion le Pen spoke at CPAC for crying out loud. Had I been told a decade ago that the Front Nationale would ever get a speaking spot at one of the biggest Recucklican events of the year, I would've been completely incredulous.

Sid,

the Russia collusion conspiracy theory is crowding out potential scandals

That's one of my favorite talking points with SWPL normies--"ha, think of all the things you could've gone after Trump on and instead you obliterated your credibility with a laughable false story and now there's no way for you to escape from it!"

Feryl,

The Republican voter base and the Deep State Recucklicans like Comey, Mueller, and Brennan are going through an increasingly vicious divorce. The neocons, too. Trump seemed too good to be true during the campaign, then seemed (and still seems) like he's mostly talk and little action. I suspect that after he leaves office his stock will rise in our eyes again because it will be apparent just how many formerly viable political pathways he made impassable as he was blazing through the electoral jungle.

The Anglo-sphere has totally committed itself to financialization.

The impending crash is going to open a lot of things up.

CJ,

That didn't surprise me because the accusation redounded to Trump's benefit--he squeezed people for all they were worth to obtain maximum value for himself. That's exactly what gave him the presidency and the inability of other Republicans to ever do anything similar is why so much anger was directed at the GOPe by the Republican electorate. Otoh, I'm surprised by how long the Stormy Daniels thing has gone on. Haven't followed it at all but was surprised a couple of weeks ago to hear that it was still being talked about, talked about a lot. That's already totally priced in to people's perception of Trump. I've maxed out the betting markets on Trump surviving to year end 2018, 2019, and 2020 because it's obvious that unless he is killed, he isn't getting kicked out.

Lithuania has much friendlier relations with Russia than the other Baltics.

They have no land border with Russia proper and the Russian minority is insignificant. Instead, they have a large Polish minority; much of the country (including the capital and largest city Vilnius, or Wilno in Polish) was under Polish rule prior to WWII. So the structural factors that strain relations between the other Baltics and Russia instead work against Polish-Lithuanian relations.

Lithuania is also by far the most culturally-similar of the Baltics to Russia (ironically given the lack of a Russian minority). Borscht is the national dish, (lots of) vodka is the national drink, the 2013 "gay propaganda" law that provoked the Russo-Democrat split was copied verbatim from a 2012 Lithuanian law.

Cyprus is more or less a Russian satrapy. The main reason Russia opposes Serbian EU membership is that Cyprus, which they control, is already a member. To the extent Cyprus is in hock to the Germans, it's only because Putin was too cheap to bail them out ($10 billion) himself. Moreover, it's the Germans who've been blocking EU sanctions on Russia.

All the Italian parties are very friendly with Russia and oppose sanctions. M5S/Lega have promised in their government program to both institute a 15% flat tax and a universal basic income, which guarantees they'll either be defaulting on their debt or asking for another bailout in a few years or months' time, which is "the main reason why the establishment is pulling out the stops to prevent them from forming government."

Tito's alleged "independence" from the Soviets was almost completely for show. It is however true that Croats and Serbs blame each other for Communism instead of the Russians.

Cicero had many faults but the way you're framing this isn't all that fair to him. Catallina was trying to use foreign troops to overthrow the government. And also topple the existing order, true. But he was a noted scumbag who consistently acted like a depraved asshole junkie and used illegal mob violence.

Saying Cicero used the "Deep State" is silly, he very publically declared martial law in an emergency in which illegal mobsters threatened to overthrow the government, remember that in Rome during this time period soldiers weren't allowed inside Rome and standing policemen didn't exist either so hired thugs and gangs were constantly used by all sorts of people for defense.

So yes Cicero very public ally used martial law to stop Cattalines goons, not really cloak and dagger stuff. Cattaline himself was killed not because of Cicero but because he was a no good hippie terroist thug scum and got involved in a highway fight

In addition, Cicero is obviously the more famous man and also the better man than Antony. Cicero certainly had slimey moments but even in his "subversive" phase he was ultimately trying to get the Republic to return to normalcy and what it was before Caeser etc. attempted to radically change the country. Antony allied himself with his old buddies foreign Egyptian Greek Whore girlfriend who was famously hated by the native Romans. Antony himself obviously lost not long after to Octavian Augustus, the same man who tried to prevent Cicero from being for killed at least for a little bit

"Haven't followed it at all but was surprised a couple of weeks ago to hear that it was still being talked about, talked about a lot. That's already totally priced in to people's perception of Trump. I've maxed out the betting markets on Trump surviving to year end 2018, 2019, and 2020 because it's obvious that unless he is killed, he isn't getting kicked out."

We all know how the feelings card is played at this point, but reading old posts on the history unfolding blog, it's evident that feelings trumping logic, tradition, and expertise is something that young Boomers started to buy into in the late 60's, and society by the late 70's was re-structuring around this non-sense. When Trump was elected, it was taken for granted that he'd be impeached; why? Because for several decades we've often not bothered to think things through, and instead cruise on sentiment, platitudes, novelty, blind-self interest, and wishful thinking (that just means feeling, right?). Instead of leveling with concrete reality (Trump is too protected by the military to be impeached, this shield may have been greatly sought out because he and his team felt as if no other realm of society could be trusted), it's just assumed that because Trump is cheeto Hitler he has to go soon. Remember, objective reality and materialism are oppressive concepts because they don't care who you are and what your opinions are. One of the biggest ideological whoppers of the last 20+ years, during the reign of the Boomers, was one of Bush's subordinates telling the media that "we make our own reality". It's not just fugly academics who don't like being told that their interpretation of reality is wrong, it's really all sectors of society that have bought into the meme that it's just not fair to be told that your are objectively clueless.

Recalibrating society around facts and logic would help us reach greater consensus and make things more peaceful and productive. As the Boomers aged and gained more clout, we've seen so much moralistic finger pointing and unwillingness to examine the material factors which govern everything, because after all, then we'd actually know what the hell's going and what to do about it. But each Boomer prefers to lock onto a certain ideology, a certain thought or feeling or meme, which makes them feeling like a Cassandra, and then blocks everything out that doesn't fit their self-concept and agenda. It's like a detective having a hunch that the killer had to have been the husband, so he locks onto (or makes up) pieces of evidence that make the husband look guilty while the detective completely overlooks other suspects.

But what happens when so many important people act this way? A total clusterfuck. Boomers (and those of other generations who are congenial to Boomer culture) at our institutions are habitually shitting all over their own lawn, to say nothing of how much they wish incinerate the houses of their enemies. The me-too meme has exposed how industries with lots of young women (and very young boys) allowed arrogant perverts to humiliate and at times attack vulnerable and desperate people. The idea that the classless, bullying, and dehumanizing environment presided over by Boomers and Gen-Xers for the last 30+ years is conducive to team and consensus building is laughable. Self-serving and mean-spirited ideological rigidity is probably going to cause this period to go down in history as an utter failure of leadership, accountability, and standards. You've got a generation of shit-fer-brains thinking that they "changed everything" (for the worse) and never wants to take accountability for the many mistakes that they've made. And still is glib about how their irresponsible track record that ought to be a good reason for them to shut the hell up, get out of the way, and start listening to others for a change. But hey, why do that when you can claim (with no substantive evidence) that previous generations were equally bad, or worse (!). Face it, the Missionaries, Losts, GIs, and Silents worked their ass off to do a lot of great things; there were mistakes and excesses (as there always are), but those generations didn't create an environment with record high levels of child abuse, serial killing, drug abuse, and divorce. And those generations defeated an era of corruption and greed (the late 19th century) from 1900-1940.

FYI-those generations did encourage some of the culture of the 60's and 70's; but if they had known how Boomers would basically self-combust, they would've put their foot down. But they just didn't know what they were getting us into.

"Alternative hypothesis: Everybody else in the NYC real estate world is crooked too!"

Another possibility is that most of America's elites are scumbags across the whole system, and piling on Trump WRT business dealings hits way too close to home. So they focus on his infidelity and the treason angle, which are more uh, esoteric. We are of course in an era of high corruption.

Another idea: perhaps Trump, by post-1970 standards, is simply not that bad a guy. There has to be some reason that he floated reform ideas around the time of NAFTA and thereafter (when neo-liberalism took over). Trump was putting honest effort into figuring out what aspects of the system weren't working.

If Trump really did break all kinds of ethical and legal boundaries to live large, I don't anticipate much interest in civics or reform. Certainly, Bush and Obama rank as two of the least intellectually active presidents ever (Bush was a coked up rich kid, Obama got lost in racial neuroses and there's very little sense that he ever really was a policy analyst or enforcer, instead following the prevailing winds while not advancing beyond generic cultMarx rage. Carter, Reagan, and Clinton all had their warts but at least they tried to be (and sometimes were) knowledgeable about the inner workings of policy. Bush and Obama were vacuous and fairly flippant about the nitty-gritty of this whole being the leader of an empire thing.

All this being said, just because you want something or try to get it, doesn't mean you will get it. It's great that Trump set out to do more, but if he can't or won't do what it takes to get good changes, then big deal.

Of all the Trump gossip stories, the most interesting ones are those the media quietly dropped. At one point there were trial balloons that suggested Trump is impotent and his current wife has a boyfriend. If true that would cause enough embarrassment to sever Trump from his base, yet the media went nowhere with it.

No one mentions that the Kushner family was selling access to the country with the EB-5 visas. But lots of hand wringing over a DC hotel and some obscure clause in the Constitution.

They also can't seem to dig up women that Trump allegedly paid to get abortions. The conviction of Michael Cohen seems a fait accompli, but it might do as little damage as Tony Rezko did to Obama.

I think they don't go into Trump's shady business dealings because it would be domino effect. Too many Jewish rich guys, and the risk of putting the financial system at risk again.

The only business con that hit Trump during the campaign was Trump University. For whatever reason, other Republicans in the primaries and Hillary only hit Trump mildly on things like swindling people of their agreed upon payments after the work was done, being in the casino business and all the ickiness that flows from that (such as having to pay off mobsters - I know everyone in real estate did it in New York and Atlantic City during the 70s and 80s but still), and hiring Polish workers and ignoring safety regulations were touched on but never fully pressed on*.

If anything, the Hillary campaign botched that line of attack: they had other billionaires insinuate Trump wasn't a REAL billionaire, just a pretender!

AE,

The Russian collusion narrative has its fits and starts, but all-in-all is inexorably falling apart.

At this point, I think that Comey and other parts of the deep state planted the story on Trump so they they could spy on his campaign and relay what was happening to Obama, who could then share it with the DNC and Hillary.

Once Trump actually won, the Democrats had a huge crisis of cognitive dissonance and actively wanted to believe in the collusion narrative so that they wouldn't have to confront why they didn't just lose the White House, but failed to retake the Senate in 2016 when everyone thought that was going to happen.

The deep state, of course, probably also wanted to believe the story once Trump had won, but also saw it as a chance to be able to dig up whatever they found that could harm Trump, as well as make it clear to Trump that he would need to take a tough stance against Russia - or else.

Feryl,

I bet part of the reason why the elites haven't gone after Trump so hard on his business record is that he more or less used to be one of them. When Trump was campaigning, I dug up and watched a season of The Apprentice to get a better grip on him and his celebrity.

Lo and behold, one of the rewards given to the winning team in one episode was meeting Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who later opted out of running for president to give Hillary a better chance and endorsed her at the Democratic National Convention!

Similarly, the Kushners seem like just another clan of globalist scumbags. They're literally married to the Trumps so they can't avoid the heat, but I'm sure other NY elites who have worked with Trump have made it clear they don't want their ties with him explored.

snorlax,

Sorry, but I think you were replying to 216!

* Trump's business decisions might in truth have been 100% justifiable and ethical, but David Cay Johnston's book raised some serious concerns, and I'm surprised they've never been fully seized upon by Trump's rivals.

My normie-sense on this all is that nobody cares. The CNN hyperventilation and Trump's (legitimate) points are all being eye-rolled away in a single "meh". Gone are the days when a nation is filled with outrage at the corruption of its civil servants. We live in an empire now and empires only have factions, not traitors.

Depart from the fever swamps into the airs of normalcy and you see a lot of people pretty content with Trump, mildly disgusted with the elites, but utterly unwilling to shift their daily routine to fight over the corpse of a once-good nation. The empire will abide.

Speaking of wishful thinking and "narrative" culture, I just was reminded again of Obama's CultMarxism over at Isteve (cf Obama and the N.o. Islam owning property in the same neighborhood). Obama's handlers played on white guilt by selling Obama as an opportunity for racial absolution, a path to a new and better way, which was then marketed to the hilt by both those who were naively optimistic and those who didn't want to be accused of racism.

Of course, how it played out was that Obama in his first term was mostly tentative in his rhetoric (less so in his appointment of Lefty commissars to his regime), and then after being re-elected (which was not a sure thing) Obama himself detonated his successful image and was upfront about what he always has been at heart: a sour and restless ID politics advocate and a yes-man for crooked institutions and elites, who only permit high level Leftists to channel their advocacy to race, gender, sexuality, and global warming.

The Facts show that Obama was horrendously bad at TradLeft policies, continuing down the road of Clinton and Bush, with the added detriment of Obama himself helping to mainstream radical CultMarxism that is far beyond any thing promoted by previous Lefty presidents.

Far from the Trump-sphere creating a "post-truth" world, the most fraudulent yarn ever spun was that Obama was this patrician and comforting presence. In the current post-modern climate of charlantry, the desperate effort to elevate Obama and equally desperate effort to depict Trump as The Worst Thing in the History of the World both indicate how terribly uninterested in The Facts many people seem to be. That might sound partisan, but really I'm trying to correct the extreme bias of the thinking and chattering classes, who actually think that the Clinton and Obama era, and the culture they represent, are substantially better than the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Trump era. Both sides have screwed up big time, but to those who invested a great deal of their feelings and support into partisanship, it's awfully hard to admit that you were conned. Credit to proles, a lot of them voted for Obama and then Trump. And these cross-overs to Trump are not the gentry types, some of whom are cuck Republicans and voted for McMullen or even Hilary in '16.

"I bet part of the reason why the elites haven't gone after Trump so hard on his business record is that he more or less used to be one of them"

It goes both ways, though; Trump has become a traitor to elites (in the minds of most elites) who once thought he was goofball tabloid fodder, regardless of their dealings with him. But then he ran over the GOP field, and became president, and suddenly this guy whom you trusted to some degree has brashly cut the elite line. What else can he do to humiliate elites? Esp. when he uses Twitter like a flamethrower, disregarding the last several decades of mega-elite decorum (in which public expression never includes derogatory statements about the character of individual elites). It's quite obvious that most elites just want Trump to shut the hell up and go away, so that they can resume the palace ball at which elites attend no matter the suffering or complaints of proles.

Keep in mind that the last period of widespread questioning of elites and officialdom was the 1960's-much of the 1970's (with a fair number of middle class people jettisoning The Struggle after Carter was sworn in). The difference between then and now is that back then, it was virtuous GIs who were the face of the establishment; as such GIs were willing to acknowledge their short-comings and make compromises with, and at times large concessions to, Silents and Boomers in exchange for restoration of peace of mind and public order.

Now that Boomers are the face of the elite, all hell has broken loose. No Boomer wants to admit that they ever did anything wrong, let alone make concessions to critics (chiefly of which would sending people like John Bolton to the gutter). As much as Boomers detested GIs for their utter boringness, Millennials now loath the corruption and arrogance of Boomers, so many of whom were given so much yet the real cost of this largesse is an anchor that's been tied to the feet of younger generations and tossed into the sea. The lack of accountability defines the current era's culture. Most people see the corruption for what it is, and want punishment to happen; denied this needed measure, we get vast anger at and alienation from the system. The respect for the Law, the Media, Congress, etc. is pretty much at an all time low right now. Back in the 60's/early 70's, there were certain segments (e.g., whiny college kids) who hated everything, but for the most part most people felt as if there was a way out, and that they could rely on some force for positive change. That's missing right now.

What I meant with the first sentence was that the elites simultaneously hate Trump for being a traitor elite who's gained even more power, so they want more than ever to get rid of him, yet their ability to rein in Trump is limited by Trump being too close to the practices of modern elite culture. They can air some kinds of dirty laundry, but not others.

An indicator of how hard it is to keep anti-immigration moods going when the economy isn't in the hole. Our sentiments are nowhere in the elite media, and thus the highly visible professional class turns on us unanimously. This is compounded by UK media glorifying invaders as "saving the NHS", as apparently white people don't want to work as nurses/doctors. On the plus side, the cuck right in Spain has collapsed, the next term will be awful but a much better right-wing should emerge from the wreckage.

The near-term also carries risks, as a recession will be blamed on the center-right parties in power, and a hard-left Sanders/Corbyn government will abolish most immigration controls should they get in. "woke capital" will not bail out the GOP with wage increases, they will bribe the Dems to not raise taxes.

I think PP is unsalvagable, and ES/PO have been absent from the Europe-wide right-wing populist trend. Podemos trafficks in fiscal insanity, this scares the Merkel-Macron-Brussels elite. Ciudadanos hates the separatists, which is somewhat redeeming because all separatist parties are left-wing. I think their amateurism won't last more than a single term in office. I don't think the VOX party can emerge unless PP goes the way of Canada's federal PC party. The risk is that the cucks will re-emerge in the new party.

For whatever reason, Portugal's leftist government can't manage to flood their country with invaders. An argument in favor of my view that the most reliable way to stop immigration is to wreck your economy, the Belarus Solution. Their cuck-right parties also look fatally compromised.

Yeah, that's a good explanation of why the latter of the two is a better fit. Cicero deserved some credit for putting down the conspiracy, but he tried to take all of it. That's more akin to Trump and the (currently goosed and precarious) economy now!

The proscription lists, in contrast, were extrajudicial. It's hard to place Antony on a progressive-conservative spectrum, though. He was the prog against Pompey but the conservative against Augusutus--sort of. Then he goes decadently native, and... well, something like that could still happen to Trump. Don't take too powerful a microscope to the historical analogy, man, it's not going to hold up well if you do!

Feryl,

Trump, by post-1970 standards, is simply not that bad a guy

That's my assumption, though I have to confess I figured just about any pretense would do. Russia is too grand to be faked yet that's what they settled on, probably because that's what Team Clinton had started pushing immediately and no one would stop her in the carnage and confusion that was the election night loss.

On the one hand, it's easy to see how Trump's connections in the past--a long, public past--could bring a lot of people down if he gets taken down. Otoh, they let the #metoo monster out of the cage and it continues to consume the side that released it.

Self-reported happiness starts declining a lot in the mid-70's; it stabilizes for women in the 80's (probably due to the Reagan era bringing about a greater emphasis on security and order, so women no longer were as afraid of twentysomething serial rapists and robbers being released early by dumb judges and parole boards). The male decline is gradual throughout the 70's and 80's. Then in the 90's for men in particular there is a big drop.

As I've often said, the behavioral/social value changes that society accepted by the mid-70's, and the de-regulation/social Darwinist economic values that began to be promoted in the late 70's, have benefited a smallish number of elites (and fringe identity people) but have been ruinous to Joe and Jane sixpack.

Something went horribly wrong in the 70's, and it's effects didn't fully resonate until the 1990's, when large numbers of people started to become detached from not just say, community groups like the Jaycees, or activists/rights groups like labor unions, but even their neighbors and family (by the 1990's, most Boomers had been married and divorced). The "classical liberal" types would claim that this sense of alienation is due to trends being too Leftist, and people not being taught self-reliance, yet the reality is that camaraderie and self-sacrifice for others is what really creates a sense of harmony and well-being. Tacit messages that you are special, you are the only one that matters, just look out for yourself, have corroded so much. When people were told in earnest in the 1930's-1960's that they ought to set aside as least some of their selfish impulses for the greater good of others, people tended to be happier.

The good thing is that almost nobody born since the mid-70's (go figure) really believes that the turn toward narcissism of the 70's and 80's is something that ought to stay in place forever. We see with stuff like CPAC, where the collectivist mindset of melding our interests together expresses itself in the turn towards border security which will renew greater tribal homogeneity, and the cucks stuck in the 70's and 80's get booed for repeating the very pablum that has ripped society apart by promoting atomization and greed. And thus the cucks were horrified to see tribalist French figures getting cheers from the New Right, when the standard practice for cucks is too rage at the remaining regulations and tribal security measures on the European continent.

Tangential, but I think what Jordan Peterson is doing is great--waking deracinated, ennui-infected white guys in their 20s and 30s up. His resonance is hard to overstate. I have multiple people in my social network who have done his self-authoring program and read the 12 Rules book.

That he goes on about collectivism being an evil blah blah blah is boomer vestige, but it doesn't matter. When white men wake up, they aren't going to settle for abstractly protecting their own shrinking (and mostly theoretically) ground. They're going to ally up.

"Tangential, but I think what Jordan Peterson is doing is great--waking deracinated, ennui-infected white guys in their 20s and 30s up. His resonance is hard to overstate..."

Except JP has been thoroughly demolished on the right and on the left. His resonance has hit a brick wall. And considering how today's young (white) men have lower levels of testosterone and supposedly have been indoctrinated by Cultural Marxism, along with Generation Z's tendency to embrace diversity, they are already "woke".

I'll give Peterson the benefit of the doubt, since he was born in the 60's. Most people born in the 60's and early 70's* seem sincere and well-meaning enough. That doesn't change the fact that they're logically and ethically wrong to promote cultural Leftism and/or cuckified Austrian school conservatism, that renders society so weak that conservatives can't even resist high immigration levels and/or military excess (Von Mises et al said that a healthy free market economy can't sustain uncontrolled immigration because immigrants tend to be much more Leftist than natives).

In practice cuck Leftism (that defers to most economic elites, criminals, traitors, and perverts) and cuck Rightism (that allows corrupt monopolies to grow unchecked and has no interest at all in defying elites) lead to an atomized society in which common sense rules and norms are ignored because we are in a free for all where nobody thinks about the long-term consequences of actions and policies.

Healthy Leftism will reorient society towards egalitarian norms and reining in excesses, while healthy Rightism will accept that we must put limits on the avarice of wayward elites and blatant monopolies, so as to make sure that people feel as though we're back on track to having a society where evil, wherever it's found, is punished and good is rewarded.

*People born in the 40's and 50's are more inclined to be cheats and frauds, while people born after the early 70's are mostly not interested in Paul Ryan conservatism, nor do they care for religious fundamentalism installing a theocracy. Also, older people of course benefited from the "innovations" and culture of the 70's-90's, and thus have a stake in defending it, or perhaps, saying that we need changes now but they have to a modified variant of what was done several decades ago. You're much less likely to hear older people say that we ought to restore, for example, the massive taxes on the rich that were in place in the 1950's. The nature of what many Silents, Boomers, and early Gen X-ers want is rooted in the greed and narcissism that came about in the 70's and subsequent decades; it's just that most of them want a different flavor of it, as opposed to a complete demolition of post-1970 culture in favor of creating another progressive era, like the one that gained in popularity from 1900-1970. And a progressive era need not be a total loss for conservatives; remember that restraints on excessive behavior were applied at roughly the same rate that restraints were placed on corruption and monopolies.

And yes, Virginia, the Boomer (and moderately high Silent) support of removing behavioral restraints in the mid-late 60's quickly bore economic conservative fruit (such as taxes on rich people being lowered in 1964, and the entry of more immigrants beginning in 1968), though the middle class didn't begin to heavily abandon the progressive era until the late 1970's (when many Americans were glad that NYC had bankrupted itself, and California voters said NO! to future property tax increases), and the working class never fully accepted economic conservatism, though by the mid-1990's they had bought into a lot of anti-progressive cliches (such as the idea that being treated like a doormat by a shitty employer is preferable to welfare). Under Carter and esp. Reagan unionizing fell a great deal, as did infrastructure spending, as did monopoly/antitrust enforcement. And then Clinton, a Democrat (!), actually took these trends even further, though he still felt enough pressure from the Rust Belt populists to push immigration down from it's insanely high late 80's/very early 90's levels (which set legal immigration records that I believe have never been surpassed). And Clinton of course was much more culturally Leftist than any previous president (saying that homosexuals who kept to themselves ought to be allowed in the military, yet in a feat of "triangulation" he didn't outright say that known homosexuals should be allowed), befitting a generation (Boomers) who were by far the most culturally liberal in Western history and by the 1990's were obliterating the remaining cultural traditionalists, some of whom were also Boomers who had rendered themselves impotent by totally abandoning economic progressivism.

I understand that many "moderate" Republicans, who believed in neither cultural nor economic Jihad, self-ejected from the political scene in the mid-90's because the purity testing of Boomer Republicans was so stringent. Paul Weyrich was one of the last notable Republicans to be an outlier, being that he supported high levels of public transit investment which he envisioned as a way to build greater communal function. Which many Republicans supported in the 1940's-1960's, but modern cucks can't get over the idea that "muh tax dollars are being wasted", as they've been trained to think over the last 50 years that the government is so stupid, inept, and corrupt, and over-sized that it can't do anything right and therefore I want to keep as much of my own money as possible and to hell with any utopian scheme to make society better). Ironically, the Boomers have shown time and time again that no large institution can function at all when it's under the stress and drama provided by the Me Generation. But the fact that the Boomers can't fully opt out of paying taxes (which most of them would be glad to do if given the option), or going to the DMV, or following traffic laws, is what really drives them nuts, in light of the fact that they are arrogant enough to think that they'd spend every dollar more wisely than the government ever could (meanwhile, Boomers are notorious for buying unnecessary crap for ostentatious status reasons) .

Let's also not forget cucks who still complain about FDR, as if his goals and ideas which culminated in the wholesome 1940's-early 60's were not a cause for the peak in communal security and contentment

The Boomers (and some Silents and Gen X-ers) focus single-handedly on mistakes and excesses, and that act as if that automatically renders any government initiative or program illegitimate. Folks, it's not the idea, it's the execution. And better team-wide and community-wide initiatives will require the Me Generation (and the generations immediately near it) to cut the crap about how awesome your life would be if everything got out of your way, and kept it's distance. It's precisely that level of immaturity and arrogance that's corroded everything in the first place.

"Don't tell me what to do" is not the philosophy that a successful society is run on. As for conservatives, STFU about the 60's and 70's being the time that everything went wrong. The economic culture of the 1930's-1950's was very liberal; in the late 60's and esp. 70's is exactly when people started buying conservative mythology about rich people being a special class whose halo shouldn't be pulled of, and also when everyone became convinced that the government was stupid and worthless, and ought to be underfunded and undermined at every turn lest it run amok by trying to (God forbid) engage everyone in a team effort to improve society.

As an old-school liberal, I myself hate the 70's for being the decade where middle class (to say nothing of the rich) people started to turn their backs on the commons. But dumb-ass cucks apparently can't discern the connection between the cultural liberalism of post-1970 and the economic conservatism of that same era. Figures, huh?

That he goes on about collectivism being an evil blah blah blah is boomer vestige, but it doesn't matter. When white men wake up, they aren't going to settle for abstractly protecting their own shrinking (and mostly theoretically) ground. They're going to ally up."

The former is an artifact of uhh, ummm, privilege. As in, you had a a fair shake to succeed in the 1950's-1990's as a young man or women. With affluence and opportunity comes a slowly degrading sense of "we're all in this together", and go figure the more elite people are the first ones to turn their back on their tribe/community, which we saw in the 1970's when many elite Silents and early Boomers overwhelmingly attacked the idea that they owed anyone anything. So much for gratitude at coming of age in the greatest period of prosperity in Western history (the 1950's and 60's).

The turn toward individualism, the manifested itself vehemently among younger people in the late 60's and 70's, was only possible after a period (the 1930's-early1960's) of tremendous communal sacrifice which then created a lot of prosperity......All this was taken for granted. Strauss and Howe said that Gen X-ers were always much more ambivalent about any kind of Cause or Struggle than the Boomers were, and no wonder; X-ers had no memory at all of powerful institutions run by stoic elders. By the late 70's, what was left to struggle against? And most of the cultural ID of X-ers was a "gift" from Boomers, who as young-middle aged adults wouldn't accept any generation not respecting the cultural changes they'd wrought. Most X-ers, whether they know it or not, ought to be grateful that the culture they were born into and got stuck with is now dying because Millennials and Gen Z have no reason at all to defend a society that's running on Boomer mores. And as Boomers retire or literally die off, who's gonna keep the rhetoric of the 60's-90's alive, aside from a handful of X-ers who have Stockholm syndrome or can't bring themselves to dis their Boomer siblings?

And though we may quibble with the ideological leanings of various youth movements (which may or may not have sympathetic Xers and Boomers along for the ride), what's important to remember is the change in methodology. Decades ago youth movements were individualistic and leaned towards destroying institutions. Now these movements have become collectivist and wish to build stronger institutions. There's no good reason, in the long run, to recycle dated garbage that now stinks like hell to younger generations. I would submit that the number one fear of most aging elites is that their youth culture now has absolutely no relevance at all, and soon the halls of various places will be full of people anxious to reject the chaos and greedy nihilism that the Boomers have desperately tried to imbue with legitimacy.

Peterson's appeal is to libertarians and people who are largely apolitical. Last I checked he was still selling out his speaking venues, pulling in tens of thousands in patreon donations, and has sold some absurd number of books. That said, I think his star will fade in the next couple of years.